VOA — The U.S. military says it has carried out multiple “precision” airstrikes against targets in eastern Syria in response to a drone attack Thursday that killed a U.S. contractor. The Pentagon said the contractor was killed Thursday at a coalition base in northeast Syria in a strike by a one-way attack drone that the intelligence community assessed was “of Iranian …

CHRI – More than a month has passed since the Iranian government issued a “pardon” for an unverified number of prisoners and detainees following the arrests of tens of thousands of people across the country amid anti-state protests that began in September 2022. As CHRI has noted, the announced pardons and sentence reductions are a political ploy aimed at covering …

Al-Monitor – A US judge ordered Iran on Wednesday to pay nearly $1.7 billion to the families of US soldiers killed in the 1983 Beirut bombing. The ruling may be appealed, but the order constitutes a legal setback for the Iranian government and could further damage US-Iran relations.  Background: Reuters reported that judge Loretta Preska in the US District Court in the Southern …

Al-Monitor —The US military has “multiple options” if Iran decides to develop a nuclear weapon, the Pentagon’s top general told lawmakers Thursday.  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told a House Appropriations Committee hearing that Iran could produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon in less than two weeks, after which it would take several more …

Iranwire – As Iranians were celebrating Nowruz, the Persian New Year, a short film paying tribute to the women-led protest movement in Iran premiered in London this week, followed by a global launch on the social media channels of advocacy group Evoca Foundation. The film “Rise” is the story of a teenage girl resisting the morality police after she is …

Iranwire- Iranian security forces have shot and killed a 19-year-old man outside the western Kurdish town of Baneh, near the Iraqi border, the activist HRANA news agency reported. It cited eyewitnesses as saying that Behzad Azizi was driving a car when he was hit by a bullet shot by Revolutionary Guards at a checkpoint. He later died in hospital. The …

Iranwire -The foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia have agreed to meet soon and pave the way for the re-opening of embassies under a Chinese-brokered deal to re-establish bilateral relations. Iran’s Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud of Saudi Arabia discussed the matter during a phone call to mark the occasion of the Muslim holy month of …

Iranwire – Five teenagers in Tehran have reportedly voiced contrition after posting a dance video on International Women’s Day that went viral on social media. The clip has inspired others across Iran – and abroad — to post similar videos with the same song, in an act of defiance toward a theocracy that does not allow women and girls to dance …

As the world is observing British-Iranian Vahid Beheshti’s hunger strike in front of UK’s Foreign Office reaching day 27 to ask the British government to proscribe the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) people should be aware of the seriousness of his actions. As a form of protesting injustice and performing a non-violent resistance, hunger strikes have been used throughout history …

Iranwire – Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei used his speech marking Nowruz, the Persian New Year, to claim that the anti-government protests that have swept Iran for more than six months are part of a global conspiracy aimed at weakening the Islamic Republic. In a televised address on March 21 from the Imam Reza Shrine in the northeastern city of Mashhad, …